


no one dares to ask where you've been

by spicedrobot



Category: Original Work, Robots and Lace
Genre: Anal Sex, Body Horror, Canon-Typical Violence, Danger Kink, M/M, Oral Sex, Robot Sex, Rough Sex, Sort Of, Threats of Violence, cheats being very loud and obnoxious, crit misusing his cable tongue, wireplay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-10
Updated: 2020-04-10
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:34:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23533909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spicedrobot/pseuds/spicedrobot
Summary: He’s way too old for shit like this. Too outdated and fragile to be the plaything of a bot who seems to enjoy fucking just as much as killing.[ A fic inspired byFayren'sOCs. ]
Relationships: Criticality/Cheats
Comments: 11
Kudos: 230





	no one dares to ask where you've been

**Author's Note:**

> Obviously some of this stuff I pulled out of my ass to make it work, so apologies if they aren't completely in character! Thanks so much to [Fayren](https://twitter.com/robots_and_lace) for all her glorious OCs!
> 
> This fic has some formatting to match Crit's in comic speech, so if you don't use the work skin the fic may read less nicely.

Cheats is really, really tired of running. 

Winter had never been a favorite of his, but this year's had been uniquely brutal. His knee’s acting up again, an already awkward limp worsened by the cold, and he can’t afford to have any more _unique characteristic_ s. Especially ones that makes him slower and easier to spot in the crowded slums. He’d had to run for the better part of six blocks before his pursuers had given up (poor sports and poorer at cards; he hadn’t even needed to cheat). Then he’d kept going until the run down scenery had become downright derelict: narrow alleyways with long shadows, half-functional neon flickering above, stragglers tucked against cracked stone and decaying brick. He’s not even sure some of them are alive.

Cheats can barely walk by the time he stumbles into the only unshuttered building on the block: a bar, for better or worse. It’s dark, grimy, and not much warmer than the outside, but it’s cover, somewhere to sit and rest his knee. He can’t fix it yet, too many eyes; he doesn’t even run diagnostics, afraid of numbers that will blink, red and threatening, on his HUD.

He pinpoints his location (10.3 miles away from the one bedroom he's been couch surfing at the past few days, _fuck_ ,) as he surveys the crowd. Most are bundled up and hunched over their drinks, the music louder than half-hearted conversations, some ancient synthwave number that’s little more than white noise in his aural receptors.

It could be worse. It could _always_ be worse. His situation just has a bit of a framing issue. He’s a bot with an imbination upgrade, sitting in a bar with a pocketful of hard-won credits. And he’s alive, damn it. He manages to wave someone over, orders the cheapest drink that comes with a straw. (The upgrade helps him pass, but his intake chamber’s...limited.) 

He dials his taste sensitivity back as the liquid registers, syrupy sweet and gruesome, along his sensors. 

The second drink goes down easier than the first. The third even starts to taste _good_.

Colors and shapes are only slightly fuzzy when the dark bar suddenly becomes darker. Darker and crowded and buzzing with warmth.

YOU.

There are so many more appropriate responses to the bot with a synth like ground glass. Posturing and groveling would be best. Screaming and fleeing a close second. Instead, when Cheats blearily lifts his head and sees a flickering, shattered faceplate attached to several feet of bot killer in a filthy white coat, he _laughs_. 

“You look ridiculous hunched over like that. How did you even _fit_ in here?”

Criticality doesn’t move for 3.2 seconds, but it feels like an eternity beneath that glitching faceplate: fizzling yellows and greens shuddering into the blackness of an all-consuming void. 

A huge hand fists into Cheats’ sweaters and pulls, terrifying vertigo, faster than Cheats’ processes can track. He grabs Crit’s wrist with a squeak, his feet dangling just above the filth-covered tile. Stupidly, all he can think beyond his budding panic is that Crit’s stretching out his fucking sweaters.

CAREFUL. YOU'LL RUIN MY GOOD MOOD.

“You have those?”

The sleeve of Crit’s coat is slimy with dark, brackish splatters: oil or blood, he can’t tell. A sound registers in his sensors, ruined and snapping. His processes race. Crit’s _laughing_ , the notion as jarring as his speech but somehow more frightening.

I HAVE ALREADY COMPLETED MY ASSIGNMENT.

Cheats doesn't have to wonder what the assignment entailed. It's written all over him.

Crit’s faceplate looms closer. Cheats feels like bacteria on a slide, examined, impossibly small, something to be dissected. Mesmerized by the black, broken mess of Crit’s faceplate, he doesn’t notice it until it slides, hot and wet, against his own. Crit’s tongue, cable, an abomination of the two, slipping sinuously against the soft black mesh of Cheats’ throat. 

Cheats doesn’t need to breathe, but _god_ , he feels like he’s going to hyperventilate.

LET’S HAVE SOME FUN.

* * *

Crit half-drags, half-carries him out of the bar and into the violent cold of a narrow alleyway. 

“Christ—” Cheats wheezes. 

No one tries to stop them, though Cheats’ not sure anyone ever stops Crit. And it’s not that he doesn’t want to go. Crit’s never hurt him, well, not _permanently_ , not without taking him apart, piece by piece until he’s an empty, shaking mess, which was impressive, honestly. There aren’t many around that could shut him up like that.

His systems still lag from the booze, chassis slow to warm. His knee twinges dangerously. Cheats wonders for a moment if he’s about to feel icy brick at his back. It wouldn’t be the first time Crit’d fucked him like that, half-frozen and aching, suspended by a single, massive hand. His systems tick up a few degrees even as he stumbles through the frozen twilight. He’s way too old for shit like this. Too outdated and fragile to be the plaything of a bot who seems to enjoy fucking just as much as killing. But there’s no cold wall, no dry snow melting as it lands on exposed, overwarm chassis. Instead, Crit stops in front of a non-descript door, tilting his head before crumpling the entry panel with the back of his fist. 

“Hey, what the fuck—” Cheats sputters as he’s shoved inside. 

An abandoned warehouse, stripped walls and vast emptiness, before it disappears into vertigo and Criticality looming above. It’s not the floor, at least, crates at his back, the seams poking him through threadbare clothes. Better than he could hope for. Crit’s not what he would call romantic, but he’ll take what he can get.

It’s dark in here, darker than the bar, only their LEDs and the light pollution emanating from the high windows, bruised purples and marred pinks of the distant skyline. 

COMFORTABLE?

“What? No—”

GOOD.

There’s a hand peeling back his furred jacket, another sliding beneath his shirt, exposing old, half-functional circuitry that Cheats’ spent years desperately trying to hide. Even during their first encounter, Crit had seen right through him. No amount of smoked cigarettes or fine words could fool a machine like him. It’s not even that Crit’s state of the art: he’s something beyond it. Nightmarish sharpness, sentience attuned with primordial, predatory instinct. More than his creator’s vision, more than code and a suped up chassis.

 _He’s a force_ —pressure, a chill as his sweaters tear beneath his hands— _and an asshole._

Large fingers slide beneath his chestplate, and _fuck_ , that makes his attention center acutely on each twitch and shift of Crit’s hand. They’ve done this before, but how keenly Crit knows what makes him tick is another sickening rush, in a bad way, in a good way. Deft fingers find old, patched wires, delicate things that he twists together, and they are most definitely _not supposed to touch_. Heat surges through Cheats like a strike, and he swears, shocked and high. Crit pauses mid motion, faceplate tilting, considering. He twists his wires again. 

“G-god damn…”

Cheats’ dick’s trying to online, but his panel’s latched and there’s nowhere to go. Crit hasn’t stopped moving his hand, drawing out thin, exposed wiring that would certainly fuck up more than one of his systems if Crit’s just a hair too rough, and he’s seen what Crit could do when he let himself loose; the evidence is splattered all over the bot’s ruined coat.

“C-careful…” Cheats says, but his synth shorts when Crit curls the wire around his index finger, tugging it a fraction of an inch. 

He feels something inside him resist, feedback from his ports, HUD pinging, but loudest is the rush of fluids lower, cock thickening, aching inside him. He’s certainly not cold anymore, not when Crit hunkers over him. Newer models run hot, his chassis alive and thrumming beneath Cheats’ hands. He’s not sure when he started touching him back, fingers grasping the pistons at his throat, the struts beneath, shallowly glancing the thick, sturdy wires above his coat collar. Crit tugs Cheats’ pants down, and he lifts his hips to help, hoping to at least leave one article of clothing in tact. 

Everything’s off-kilter, a little too needy. He can’t remember the last time he’s done this. A few weeks? Longer? Fuck—he wants to blame the booze when he reaches for the front of Crit’s pelvic frame, swearing as his hand can’t quite reach. Fucking Crit and his ridiculously huge body— 

PATIENCE.

“That’s cute coming from the bot who’s breaking and entering for a booty call,” Cheats grumbles.

He smacks the back of his head on the crates as Crit finds the wiring between his newly exposed thigh and pelvic compartments. 

WE COULD BE OUTSIDE.

“P-point taken.” 

Crit pets smooth fingers along tender, hidden nodes, slipping somewhere deep and delicate that even Cheats didn’t touch, couldn’t trust himself to. One wrong move could break him. Cheats tries not to tremble. He should recalibrate his sensitivity, really make the bastard work for it, but that would require processing power that he can’t spare, not when a heavy weight settles directly on his modesty panel, cupping him with his huge fist while his other's still knuckle deep in wires. Cheats can’t feel it, but the intention is there, hot like a promise, and his steam vents release with a sudden hiss.

“Fuck, just open me up already,” Cheats growls.

MAYBE I’LL JUST USE YOUR ASS AND KEEP YOU LATCHED.

Cheats doesn’t mean to still at that, a horrifyingly honest moan lodged in his synth.

“Y-you know that wouldn’t work. You’d bust my canister _and_ my panel.”

I’VE DONE WORSE.

Thankfully, Crit doesn’t make good on his threat. He presses Cheats’ sequence like he could do it offlined, and the panel recedes up and away. His cock slots into place, segmented and dripping, full-fucking-capacity.

“God damn it…” Cheats says into his forearm, missing the way Crit stares up at him, faceplate flickering. 

If there’s one nice thing he could say about Crit, it’s that he doesn’t leave a bot unsatisfied. An infuriating, singularly positive part of his personality. He’s always gives when he takes, no place within Cheats safe, pried open and groped until he was overloaded and begging. And that was always just the beginning. 

There are no fingers this time, no even, calculated rutting while Crit’s steady purr resonates against the side of Cheats’ faceplate. Only Crit’s heat shifting downward with him. Even between his legs, the bot seems to tower over him, commanding, in control. 

It slithers from his faceplate then, that unnerving cable-tongue. Long, longer than should be possible, heated and twisting. It curls around his cock, drags from base to tip in a slow, plush slide, and Cheats swears, synth crackling.

“Oh my god…”

Crit’s synth makes a faint sound of amusement, and he flattens a hand over Cheats’ middle, pinning him flush to the crates.

DON’T MOVE.

Like he could ever hope to stay still, not when that tongue tightens around him, shivering and moving all on its own, very unlike any tongue he’s ever felt. It _writhes_ as it slowly slides along his cock, its strange black lubricant mixing with his own. An absolute horror to watch, but Cheats can’t look away. All sounds lodge in his synth as Crit dips his head, drawing Cheats dangerously close to the raw, shattered edges of his faceplate.

“C-crit, c’mon…!” 

He’s never felt crazier, watching his cock disappear into the gape of Crit’s face. It’s not what he expects, a wriggling, soft cable-mesh mix pulsating around him, suckling him, _fuck_ , he’s glad Crit is holding him down. He has to fight against the sensation, the stubborn insistence that he should pump his hips regardless of how close he is to those jagged edges. Crit’s rumbling synth vibrates all the way to Cheats’ cock, and he tosses his head back, cables flexing, moan strangled. Too afraid to look, too much as that squirming mass tightens and shudders.

WHAT DID I SAY. 

It shakes him, hearing that perfect, ruined speech while he’s buried to the hilt in the closest thing Crit has to a mouth, centimeters away from shattered plating that looks so much like jagged teeth. His sensors ping, warnings flashing, god damn he can’t believe it, it’s too soon.

“Fuck—oh god...!!”

Trembling, gloved hands seize upon that smooth backing of Crit's faceplate, scrambling for purchase. Afraid to touch, unable to keep himself from it. Crit’s mass of cables are his only reaction: suctioning tight to his cock, throbbing around it, drawing it out of his faceplate just as Cheats overloads. Lube catches along those writhing cables while Crit’s faceplate oscillates between several colors that Cheats can’t even _name_. 

He’s swearing, at least he thinks he is, but mostly he’s jerking into the lazy flicking of that tongue, the last spurts of lubricant swiped away as Crit straightens.

THAT WAS QUICK.

“Shut up...”

Cheats wishes he could speak with any gusto, but his mind’s focused several feet lower, baited by the familiar snap-release of Crit’s cock. It extends over his own, dwarfing it, drags through the condensation and lubricant shining on his chassis. Crit takes his cock in hand, taps it against Cheats’ frame.

OPEN UP.

Cheats clicks with annoyance. The bot _knows_ how to open him up. It’s a spectacle, trying to get his fingers to cooperate, flubbing the sequence a few times as he clasps a hand behind each knee, holding himself open, on display. Not that he’s much to look at. After a string of curses, the lower section of his panel recedes.

No time to feel exposed, to feel the lingering chill around them. Crit’s already moving.

“Somehow I always forget how fucking stupid your cock is,” he squeaks as it drags against his ass. 

Cheats’ never sure how it fits. Some lube and elbow grease and a whole lot of hope. He tries to relax, but it never seems to matter. Crit shifts his hips, butting up against him, Cheats’ sensors already primed for what he’s about to feel. A moment of indecision, hesitation. Pressure, heat, barely concealed need that has him angling to meet Crit halfway. He spreads his thighs wider, breathes out uselessly, but still, still—

“ _Fuck_!” 

God, he can’t stop the litany of swears rattling from his synth, the twitters and chirps as he’s breached, sensors battered as the first inch sinks inside. There’s no squirming, no resisting, no room to move, flattened to the crates by Crit’s steaming frame, aching, fearing, wanting the inevitable, trying in vain to put his focus anywhere else. The ridges slip inside, one by one, each feeling more impossible, more incredible, than the last.

ARE YOU GOING TO COME AGAIN?

“F-fuck you,” he wheezes. “Fuck you fuckfuckfuck—” 

There’s no talking his way out of this one, how many times would it take before he could handle this, but there it is, hitting him like a truck, stealing thought and process and he’s overloading in thick ropes over his sweater, a line even catching across his faceplate. Crit’s hand overtakes his vision—only seconds later does Cheats realize he’s smeared the lube where it landed.

TOO EASY.

“Bastard...hh…”

His fingers sink into Crit’s coat, palms coating in old gore, but that’s the last thing on his mind. Crit bottoms out and holds, curling over him, synth rumbling. Cheats’ systems stutter, attempting to process everything he’s feeling and failing miserably. He can’t move. He’s helpless. He’s going to come again and he’s not even sure he has anything left in his fucking canister—then Crit’s withdrawing, moving, fucking him, and it’s not a slow, gentle thing, not even at first. 

Thing’s get hazy then, like they always do with Crit. Terrifying suspension, unbelievable heat, a harried catch-drag that has Cheats’ synth shorting out in code and gasps, hiccups of static. It’s noisy, the wet smack of mesh and metal and lube bubbling from him, forced out by Crit’s cock. The larger bot’s deep, quiet grunts of pleasure, his tongue sliding over Cheats' faceplate, tasting the lube, the tapered tip finding his intake chamber and pressing inside while Cheats gasps. It's not meant for anything solid, and it’s just one more haptic data set he can’t process but experiences like pulsing electricity. It wriggles and pumps into him in time with Crit's thrusts, deeper each time, more dangerous, hitting sensors that've never been touched before.

He whines, and Crit’s hand presses over his throat, muffling his synth. Cheats remembers the last time that hand had settled there, fear surging with stupid, throbbing pleasure.

Cheats has no idea how long it goes on. Fans humming, vents popped, condensation and steam and lube warm between his thighs. Crit flooding him, offlining him, his hips still pumping slow and sure when Cheats' senses return, Crit’s faceplate trained on the mess that gushes out of him as he pushes back inside again and again.

It sometimes ends like this. Cheats half-naked and running on backup power, covered in fluids, scrambling to put himself back together, arrange his ruined clothes, restack his processes. Crit never lingered, and that was probably for the best. Who knows what Crit would do if he was bored and fucked out to boot. 

GET UP.

Cheats stills. Then he tips his head tiredly in Crit’s direction. The bot looked no worse for wear than when they started. He wishes he could say the same for himself.

“What?”

Crit doesn’t wait for him to obey. He plucks him up by the scruff while Cheats desperately tries to rebutton his pants, which is much more difficult when suspended several feet above the ground.

“What’s your _problem_?”

YOUR PROBLEM. YOU CAN’T WALK.

Cheats stops struggling. He twists around to look at him. 

“You knew…” Breathless and low. Then. “You knew and fucked me anyway?!”

I COULD JUST RIP YOUR LEG OFF AND BE DONE WITH IT.

“Please tell me we’re not going to see your girlfriend.”

Cheats isn’t sure he can handle another round of being patched up beneath that flinty, exasperated gaze. 

YES.

Cheats squeaks as Crit tosses him unceremoniously over his armored shoulder. He can’t say he likes the view much from up here, less so when they emerge into the same frigid alleyway they had been in more than an hour before.

“God damn it…” He mumbles into Crit’s back. 

At the end of his reserves (in more ways than one), he can only huddle closer, leeching the huge bot’s warmth, and hope that the tiny mechanic with very big boyfriends would fix him pro bono for the second time.


End file.
